Watch a 6.5 Hour Car Retouch via Animated Gif

Photographer and retoucher John Zhang takes some really wicked car photos. You should check those out at his website. As a member of our very active (and now very huge) Facebook Group, John uploaded one of his recent images for critique and examination. Needless to say, we loved the shot. John wanted to show how long a work of art takes, and so he also uploaded a sweet gif to show what 6.5 hours of retouching looks like.

"It took around 6.5 hours total. Most of the time was just spent on "cleaning" the car since there were many distracting elements reflected onto it from the photo shoot location. People are always hesitant to believe that I actually do spend x amount of time on my photos." I certainly believe it John!

Jaron Schneider is an Fstoppers Contributor and an internationally published writer and cinematographer from San Francisco, California. His clients include Maurice Lacroix, HD Supply, SmugMug, the USAF Thunderbirds and a host of industry professionals.

Only problem with that is that there was no assist on this shoot and it was a guerrilla type shoot that lasted 30mins. But to your point, I totally agreed and was thinking the exact same while editing.

How did you create the matte paint look on the car? Looks great.
My only criticism is the smoke at the back of the car was unnecessary, if the back tires looked like they were spinning the smoke would make more sense.

This might be removed as spam but I have a video on car retouching called Jaguar XK Photoshop Car Photography Tutorial" Compositing A New Environment which covers exactly this kind of retouching.http://tinyurl.com/bu6l6c3 Cheers, Simon